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God Proven to Exist According to Mainline Physics

James Redford said:
The entropy of the universe diverges to infinity, per the Second Law of Thermodynamic. Entropy is informational complexity. So a later state of the universe is able to perfectly emulate (i.e., perfect down to the quantum level) a previous state of the universe.
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That doesn't follow.
 
James Redford said:
Entropy is informational complexity.
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No it isn't.

In thermodynamics:
Entropy is a measure of the inability of energy in a system to do work. Essentially it is lost or unavailable energy.


In information theory:
Entropy is a measure of the uncertainty in knowing the value of a random variable. Essentially it is the information lost by not knowing that variable.
 
James Redford said:
Regarding the equivalence of God and the Omega Point: the Omega Point is omniscient, having an infinite amount of information and knowing all that is logically possible to be known;
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Cramming all information into one spot is not the same as knowing something, which implies the existence of a consciousness. I hard drive stores information, but it does not know or understand it.

Further, the Omega point would not have an infinite amount of information, since, at singularity, a great deal of information would have already been destroyed.
 
Upchurch said:
Further, the Omega point would not have an infinite amount of information, since, at singularity, a great deal of information would have already been destroyed.
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Ah, but that only means there is now less to know.

If there are only two pieces of information in the universe, and you know both of them...why, you're omniscient!
 
James Redford said:
Regarding the equivalence of God and the Omega Point: the Omega Point is omniscient, having an infinite amount of information and knowing all that is logically possible to be known; it is omnipotent, having an infinite amount of energy and power
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The amount of energy in the universe is finite so where does the Omega Point get an infinite amount of energy?
 
elbe said:
My head is a little off kilter tonight from lack of sleep, so maybe that's it, but a computer, or being, made up of everything in the universe being omniscient doesn't make any sense to me. I know, I know, shocking. To properly qualify everything single atom and photon and subatomic particles would require more information than the universe, itself, can hold.

Take computers for example. The smallest amount of data is a bit, which is just a 1 or 0, set in a transistor. If you wanted to store all the information about one computer's absolute state in another computer you would need to store what that transistor is set to (1 or 0) and which transistor it is. Just knowing a transistor is set to 1, for example, doesn't really help you understand the current state of the entire computer. So even if you can somehow store the current location of the transistor as a single bit, it would still require two bits to store information about one bit.
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I appreciate your stance against this bilge, but your statements here about computers are just plain wrong. Essentially you are stating that in order to save the whole state of a computer you have to store each bit of data along with that bit's address. In any rationally designed computer that is incorrect; the data will (I'm not sure about must) be organized in such a way that an order for the data can be assumed, so all that would then be necessary is the data and a starting address, which in itself can have an assumed value (like 0). Observe that cloning a hard drive (as is understood in IT today), for instance, takes up no more space than the original copy. I presume that even a device as chaotic-seeming as a human brain could have its neurons enumerated and snapshot, and the cloning of that to, say a magnetic tape (the ultimate serialization, I'm sure) would require nothing additional by way of data. Whether keeping additional data for the purposes of efficient restoral or for other reasons is beside the point.

So a single photon would need information stored about it's current location and vector velocity which, presumably, would require more information than can be stored on one photon...
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Heisenburg had a lot to say about that process, mainly that it simply could not be done. Quantum mechanics gets in the way, and all of a sudden it depends on that cat's state when you go o look at it, or which of the manifold universes you occupy. Ignoring that, in terms of standard mechanics the reproduction of a photon by another photon, assuming the mechanism to do so existed (which it theoretically doesn't), a cloned photon would contain all the information the original contained; no more, and no less.

unless you are "storing" the data by actually having the photon really there, but that's not really omniscience as it is the universe existing
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No, by cloning it - creating a copy in 100% fidelity. I do agree with your last phrase, though; see Upchurch's comment in #123.

This all reminds me about a scifi story I read about building the ultimate computer. They found out, from an experimental AI, there was an expensive, though possible, way to create a larger, though finite, AI that could compute anything. Someone stumbled upon the problem: it would take it longer than the life of the universe for it to do so. Of course, the AI didn't think that was a problem.
 
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shadron said:
I appreciate your stance against this bilge, but your statements here about computers are just plain wrong. Essentially you are stating that in order to save the whole state of a computer you have to store each bit of data along with that bit's address. In any rationally designed computer that is incorrect; the data will (I'm not sure about must) be organized in such a way that an order for the data can be assumed, so all that would then be necessary is the data and a starting address, which in itself can have an assumed value (like 0). Observe that cloning a hard drive (as is understood in IT today), for instance, takes up no more space than the original copy. I presume that even a device as chaotic-seeming as a human brain could have its neurons enumerated and snapshot, and the cloning of that to, say a magnetic tape (the ultimate serialization, I'm sure) would require nothing additional by way of data. Whether keeping additional data for the purposes of efficient restoral or for other reasons is beside the point.
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I'm afraid I'm not talking about data storage but actually storing the physical state of the entire computer - aka, what each and every transistor, is doing at a specific point in time. If you want to simplify it you can think of it as storing the current state of the CPU, if you want some sort of sequential system for it's switches, including a starting address, you'll still need to store, somehow, the layout of the switches into the sequence.

shadron said:
Heisenburg had a lot to say about that process, mainly that it simply could not be done. Quantum mechanics gets in the way, and all of a sudden it depends on that cat's state when you go o look at it, or which of the manifold universes you occupy. Ignoring that, in terms of standard mechanics the reproduction of a photon by another photon, assuming the mechanism to do so existed (which it theoretically doesn't), a cloned photon would contain all the information the original contained; no more, and no less.
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I'm perfectly familiar with Heisenburg, but as the initial claim was this super-god-computer knows everything about the universe it would have to be able to store that information and, assuming it magically could, I tried to demonstrate that it would need more information than the universe can provide.

shadron said:
No, by cloning it - creating a copy in 100% fidelity. I do agree with your last phrase, though; see Upchurch's comment in #123.
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A cloned photon cannot contain all the details about a specific photon, and I'm being very very specific. The only way it could contain everything, position and velocity at a specific point in time it would have to be at that point in time and it would be existing in the same actual location as the original photon. Can two photons exist in exactly the same place? If so, wouldn't it make having two there irrelevant as they should both behave exactly the same.
 
martu said:
The amount of energy in the universe is finite so where does the Omega Point get an infinite amount of energy?
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Actually, the sum total of mass-energy in the Universe is zero, so, ummm.......
 
I think Tipler is just trying to use science and physics to justify the existence of God
 
PaxImperium,

Actually, that is a better description of what he is doing. Agreed


INRM
 
Wollery,

In a closed universe that's correct the total sum of energy is indeed zero. I would also assume that there would have to be a finite mass as well as if there wasn't the matter/energy and negative potential energy (gravity) would all have neutralized out to zero infinitely fast.

In an open universe however there is no such requirement. However I don't see how such a universe could exist as every piece of matter (positive energy) has a mass (which is a negative potential energy), granted energy doesn't have mass... but matter and energy convert back and forth all the time so...

Maybe I'm wrong about some details here, but from what I see we live in a closed system


INRM
 
As humans we are in the same situation as the hypothetical flatlander. Anything beyond might his flatland existence might seem inconceivable or even ridiculous because his senses don't allow for it. The honest truth is that we don't know what lies beyond our detectable univerese. We assume or hypothesize based on what we seem to perceive here. But beyond what we can detect there are no guarantees.
 
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Radrook said:
As humans we are in the same situation as the hypothetical flatlander. Anything beyond might his flatland existence might seem inconceivable or even ridiculous because his senses don't allow for it. The honest truth is that we don't know what lies beyond our detectable univerese. We assume or hypothesize based on what we seem to perceive here. But beyond what we can detect there are no guarantees.
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Which makes it irrelevant to make things up based on nothing more than fantasy such as god.
 
James Redford said:
Rather, X--the Omega Point--is equivalent to God, therefore X is God.

Regarding the equivalence of God and the Omega Point: the Omega Point is omniscient, having an infinite amount of information and knowing all that is logically possible to be known; it is omnipotent, having an infinite amount of energy and power; and it is omnipresent, consisting of all that exists.
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Might be reaching a bit much. Just because one achieves a transcendent level of knowledge about reality and how it operates doesn't mean it's physically possible to pwn it all, so to speak. There might simply not be enough time. Or energy. Or matter. Or QM limits might leave an inherent fuzziness in operative capacity. And so on.

But for the sake of argument, I'll allow it. We just don't know whether there's some physical limit that cannot be breached, even with (pseudo)-infinite, godlike cleverness and knowledge.


Additionally, the cosmological singularity consists of a three-part structure: the final singularity (i.e., the Omega Point), the all-presents singularity (which exists at all times at the edge of the multiverse), and the initial singularity (i.e., the beginning of the Big Bang). These three distinct parts which perform different physical functions in bringing about and sustaining existence are actually one singularity which connects the entirety of the multiverse.
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Even allowing the earlier, you now seem to suggest the "singularity" nature of both the Big Bang and the Omega Point as being things of the same kind, when they are not, even allowing for the previous that such a transcendent being could indeed pwn all reality.


And given an infinite amount of computational resources, per the Bekenstein Bound, recreating the exact quantum state of our present universe is trivial, requiring at most a mere 10^123 bits (the number which Roger Penrose calculated), or at most a mere 2^10^123 bits for every different quantum configuration of the universe logically possible (i.e., the multiverse in its entirety up to this point in universal history). So the Omega Point will be able to resurrect us using merely an infinitesimally small amount of total computational resources: indeed, the multiversal resurrection will occur between 10^-10^10 and 10^-10^123 seconds before the Omega Point is reached, as the computational capacity of the universe at that stage will be great enough that doing so will require only a trivial amount of total computational resources.
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I won't argue the numbers, though I seem to remember that to achieve that level of data manipulation, i.e. in excess of 10^^123, which is on the order of the number of neutrons if the universe were packed solid with neutrons, which 'tain't, requires tricks that exponentially drag out the computation in time. And also presumes the fine granularity of the universe, in practical or QM terms, doesn't provide another physical limitation. After all, in theory you could embed the full state of the universe, at every Plank moment, all in one extremely long real number*.

Again, but even allowing for that, a simulation of a conscious mind is not a conscious mind.

This was an important point AI researcher Searle kept trying to make in the '70s and 80s. All indications were pointing to intelligence as being a purely computational thing. And therefore you could simulate it with computers, or a set of pipes, buckets, and pulleys.

But he points out that consciousness is a real, physical phenomenon. And therefore it must arise out of real-world physics somehow. And a simulation of thinking is really just moving electrons, or water around. We would never expect consciousness to arise from them based on an interpretation of what those movements means, which, at the end of the day, is all it is.

No, he says. Whatever consciousness is, and how it arises, may be a complete mystery. But one thing's for certain: it doesn't come about purely as an informational process. It's like saying a simulation of a car lift can actually lift a real car, which obviously it can't**.


So any future science-based resurrection of us, which, by the way, already has a name: The Techno-Rapture :) will, per your description merely create copies of ourselves. You, who died, will never regain consciousness, though someone will, who will sigh a sigh of relief even as they exclaim that, yes, they did come back to life.

Of course, if this transcendent being(s) are able to actually track the position of all the particles to that present, far in the future day, gather them up, and reassemble them, then I'd least be a little more believing that I, and not some copy, were going to come back to life. But that's another huge, huge debate in the AI world, and not the subject of today's discussion.






So let's see where all this leads:

So to recapitulate:

1.) The Omega Point (or, for that matter, the society near the Omega Point) can trivially perform the universal resurrection of the dead, upon which the people resurrected can live eternally in literal heaven, i.e., paradise.
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Yes, a Techno-Rapture is theoretically possible. Whether they choose to let us be in peace or not is another issue.


2.) The Omega Point is omniscient.
3.) The Omega Point is omnipresent.
4.) The Omega Point is omnipotent.
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To within the physical limits of reality insofar as a godlike cleverness may not even be able to fully manipulate it.


5.) The cosmological singularity is a triune structure, of which the Omega Point is one component.
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An assertion with which I do not agree, due to superficial simularities in the "singularity" concept of black holes and the Big Bang, and the singularity, a deliberate analogy describing the transcendent moment theorized for some point in the future, "beyond which it is impossible to know anything."


6.) The cosmological singularity is transcendent to, yet immanent in, space and time.
7.) The cosmological singularity is the only achieved (actually existing) infinity.
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A godlike intelligence would not necessarily be capable of manipulating the universe to complete detail; this has not been demonstrated. I.e. the transcendent entity may not be able to manhandle, or pwn, everything in every way possible.

Moreover, it would not be truly infinite, either. While it could, in theory, achieve any desired level of finite godliness, that may need to take advantage of exponential use of the time axis, and thus you'd never get to a true infinite capability, intelligence, or knowledge. However, doing things like simulating the entire universe a googolplex number of times would still be technically finite, so there's a ton of breathing room for finiteness to pwn all reality.


8.) The Omega Point creates the universe and all of existence.
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That it could rearrange everything up to, and perhaps including, the Big Bang does not mean it will choose to do so. It might be able to alter things for the better, make them worse, or make everything, including itself, cease to exist, irrevocably. But those are different issues. That it could re-formulate all reality doesn't necessarily mean it will, much less that it would be proper to interpret it as being responsible for reality as-it-is.


Those are all the physical properties that have been claimed for God in traditional Christian theology. There are many other congruities between the Omega Point cosmology and Christianity. Below are listed just some of them:

1.) We are gods: John 10:34 (Jesus is quoting Psalm 82:6).
2.) We are God and God is us: Matthew 25:31-46.
3.) We live inside of God: Acts 17:24-28.
4.) God is everything and inside of everything: Colossians 3:11; Jeremiah 23:24.
5.) We are members in the body of Christ: Romans 12:4,5; 1 Corinthians 6:15-19; 12:12-27; Ephesians 4:25.
6.) We are one in Christ: Galatians 3:28.
7.) God is all: Ephesians 1:23; 4:4-6.
8.) God is light: 1 John 1:5; John 8:12.
9.) We have existed before the foundation of the world: Matthew 25:34; Luke 1:70; 11:50; Ephesians 1:4; 2 Timothy 1:9; Isaiah 40:21.
10.) Jesus has existed before the foundation of the world: John 17:24; Revelation 13:8.
11.) The reality of multiple worlds: Hebrews 1:1,2; 11:3.
12.) God is the son of man: Matthew 8:20; 9:6; 10:23; 11:19; 12:18; 12:32; 12:40; 13:37; 13:41; 16:13; 16:27,28; 17:9; 17:12; 17:22; 18:11; 19:28; 20:18; 20:28; 24:27; 24:30; 24:37; 24:39; 24:44; 25:13; 25:31; 26:2; 26:24; 26:45; 26:64. (This is just listing how many times Jesus referred to himself as the Son of Man in the Gospel of Matthew, althought he refers to himself as this throughout the Gospels. It was the favorite phrase that he used to refer to himself.)

How item Nos. 9 and 10 relate is that within Prof. Tipler's Omega Point Theory the universe is brought into being by the Omega Point, as the end-state of the universe causally brings about the beginning state, i.e., the Big Bang singularity (since in physics it's just as accurate to say that causation goes from future to past events: viz., the principle of least action; and unitarity). Another way of stating it is that in the Omega Point cosmology, the Omega Point is the fundamental existential and mathematical entity, from which all of reality derives. Indeed, within the Omega Point Theory, the Big Bang singularity and the Omega Point singularity are actually just different functions of the same singularity. Further, anything which at any time will exist will simply be a subset of what is rendered in the Omega Point.
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The Bible, like any other religious text or artifact, is a bunch of made up stuff that purports to reflect realty, if a very bizarre one. Given its use to control and profit from the masses, growing them and binding them together, it should not be surprising it's adopted a number of philosophies that "work", like the Golden Rule or Ten Commandments, or philosophies that are agreed to "work", regardless of whether they do in reality or not.

So I wouldn't bother aligning your conclusions to the Bible or the OT. After all, if they were written by the hand of God, then they wouldn't be wrong to begin with, and need a radical re-interpretation, would they?

And if they weren't (which they aren't) then any proposed alignment is coincidental at best, allowing for the fact a major meme like that adopts philosophies that work or pre-existed, and thus in some sense represent reality.











* For now, we'll leave aside discussions on whether reality's granularity, and the math that accurately describes it, are proportional to rational, real, or some higher order infinite set of numbers.

** Others say a simulation of a calculator still calculates real, valid results. But again they're missing the point -- the result is an interpretation, really more of an affectation, that humans place on the interpretation of the form of the result -- aligned crystals in a real calculator, or lit up pixels on a screen of a simulated calculator. In that sense, which is the important one, they are both equally real, and both producing something that doesn't have a physical definition, so to speak, any more than saying "that chair" over there is "really a chair", when there isn't really such a thing as a "chair" in some Greek philosophy way, but just a bunch of atoms glommed together.
 
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Tipler, by the way, isn't just trying to use science to prove the existence of God, but specifically the Christian God. The book of his I reviewed for Skeptic was, "The Physics of Christianity." In fact, he not only tries to "prove" the virgin birth - using biologically based parthenogenesis and seeing Jesus as a rare double X chromosome male - he also tries to make science "prove" the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Thus, he's actually trying to "scientifically" validate Roman Catholic dogma.
 
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